


True Love

by dr_glove



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gore, M/M, Masochism, Sadism, Stockholm Syndrome, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_glove/pseuds/dr_glove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enraptured by his presence, and immersed in the pain he gives you, you cannot escape. You took a peek into his twisted mind. There was no word to describe the conflicting emotions you felt. You wanted to disappear. You wanted to die. He insisted you weren't to be taken by anyone else. You are his and his only.<br/><br/>You wondered why it felt so warm in your chambers that day.<br/><br/>[Reader/Eddie Gluskin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Love

**Author's Note:**

> Outlast has fucked me every which way. And I liked it. ~~god why is my description so pretentious im sorry~~  
>   
>  Requests and feedback is always welcome.

You liked to believe there was a sense of delicacy in the way he was handling you. The way he caressed your skin, the way he inhaled the scent of your sweaty bangs and musty body odor. It was a methodological procedure in how he examined your shaking hands and shushed you before you began hyperventilating and passing out after you smelled the rust and blood on his fingers. Each time you woke, he would murmur sweet nothings to you, as if you were his lover trying to ease you out of bed or coax you after a difficult day with your boss. Sometimes if you didn’t respond to his affection, he would rear his aggressive nature and drive small cuts at the tips of your fingers. One by one, if you happened to displease or speak out of turn, he drove another cut, some deeper than the previous ones. He told you they would only heal as long as the only person you touched was him. You pretended to believe him after the 7th finger.  
  
“Darling,” he cooed. His favorite pet name for you. A name only to be uttered by him, and no one else, lest any man speak that way to you. You were his and his only. When your face wrenched in disgust, he traced the outline of your jaw with a different blade. It was different from the ones he used for your hands. He said he liked separating which knife he used for each respective part of your body. A delicate, beautiful, thin blade for your fingers. A thicker, rounded off at the edges knife for your face. If you were good, he would only cut incisions at the base of your ears and the nape of your neck. Perhaps a metaphor for how he might treat you if he were sane. In the inner recesses of your mind, you believed he was somewhat sane. “Do you not like when I call you _darling_? Has another man been calling you this?” He was sweet when he started. As he continued, he began getting rather angry, like he went through your phone and found racy texts under someone else’s name.  
  
“You _slut_.” As you whimpered, he drove another blade into the peak of your shoulder. Every day, he found a new way to bring you horrific pain that was unlike the previous day. You shuddered and coughed into your opposite hand. Blood smeared your palm. “After everything I’ve done for you, you can’t even bear to give me a proper greeting?” He pulled the rusted knife from your shoulder. Blood leaked down the curves and crevasses of your arm. A pained bout of screaming wafted throughout the room. “Oh, but I’ll erase every dirty thing about you. Your imperfections and…,” he ran his thumb down the edges of his blade, “ _vulgarities_.”  
  
Your vision started fading. Your head was spinning. You felt sick, but you had ejected your stomach contents so often that there was nothing to heave from your body anymore. This hadn’t stopped you from gagging. As your eyes watered, you mustered up enough energy to speak. “Why won’t you kill me?” It was a question that had been in the back of your mind since he became your groom and you his “wife.” You wondered it so often. Each time he set down his suitcase at the base of the door and put his hat on the rack, saying, “Honey, I’m home,” you asked yourself this. Every time he forced your body, conscious or not into his bed to sleep, it burned in your mind. Why couldn’t you be like all the other goddamned bodies in the facility?  
  
His demeanor changed. Again. “Sweetheart, you say just the darndest of things. We’re so beautiful together. Don’t you see?” A hand came up to brush the side of your face. “Dirty sluts like you don’t deserve the release of death.”  
  
And now you ask, where was that supposed sanity you wanted to believe there was? In a rather twisted exchange of events, you still believed that even in another life, he could have been happy without hurting someone else. During the times he would leave you by yourself either restrained or ordered to do errands, you were very thoughtful of his character. To anyone else, he was just a psychopath. Someone who killed and tortured for his own pleasure. Someone who had an extremely warped sense of reality. Someone who was unlovable. Someone who mistook their sick obsessions for love and kindness. And in a way, he certainly was.  
  
Then after desensitizing yourself to the fucked up things going on in that asylum, you figured it might have been something different. Although his efforts were demented, and his victims did not give a vibe that read, “purity and innocence has filled our veins,” perhaps he really did want someone to love. Someone to love him. You liked to salvage every last bit of peace when you imagined him as a middle aged man who worked two jobs trying to sustain himself and a lover. What would he be without his weapons and toys and countless horrified victims? Would he even be anything?  
  
How often would he cook for his wife if she wanted to sleep in for a morning or two? Would he dedicate time to carefully prepare a bubble bath if her shoulders were sore? Would he carefully pin her down before thrusting shallowly into her, brought to his knees every time he saw her flustered face? Maybe he would stare at her dreamily as she sleeps and kisses her forehead, murmuring a quiet good night. Or perhaps he would wrap his arms around her waist and revel in her scent before closing his eyes.  
  
You wondered if, in a less fucked up universe, he would have been able to do these things. But then, would he still be happy?  
  
Could he, perhaps, have found a deceitful wife sharing their bed with another man? Would he walk in on her in the act or meet the man himself at the elevator before arriving at his apartment, reeking of alcohol and sex? Would he scold her and scream at her, break things and call her degrading names so much that the friendly neighbors from across the hall would call the cops? Would he carefully interrogate her, trying to see if she would tell the truth first or worm her way out of a difficult situation? After she closes her robe, would she break down in tears as her betrayed husband watches? Would it be possible that he just pretends not to see marks adorning her skin and used condoms littering the floor? Would he lie to himself just one more time to keep her?  
  
The empty sorrow and hollow anger would have rattled his bones. He might have drank his sorrows so he could salvage any semblance of happiness before waking up to another shitty hangover and repeating the process until his wife took her things and left. He could have also lurked in the bar that was just a mile and a half away. He would have went by foot too, because walks were the source of his serenity. He might have stumbled across a hooker and took her to a hotel for a night alone with her. Or maybe he would politely decline and continue in his attempts to lose himself in a crowd. He couldn’t lose himself alone. The idea of loneliness scared him. And after spending more than half his life with someone he loved so tenderly, who wouldn’t it scare?  
  
“I’ll be back after work, my love.” He pressed his lips against your cheek. Whereas they were usually cold, they were somewhat lukewarm. “Don’t forget who you belong to, or else I’ll make you remember.” As you carefully nodded, he threw a coat over his shoulder and obtained his hat from the rack. A sigh of relief erupted from your lungs. No more pain. At least for a few hours. Your will to escape had long ago died along with the previous victims you witnessed get mutilated. Your future was going no where - no, your future was with him. Eddie Gluskin. It didn't matter what your last name was, since you had adopted his anyways. You didn't know how to feel about the situation, any part of it, really. There was just a sinking emptiness that dwelled heavily on your chest, considering how fucked up it was that you had to be relieved that your sadistic husband was leaving your “home.” You weren't really terrified of him anymore. Just the pain he inflicted. It was peculiar that your brain didn't associate pain with his presence directly; your psyche treated them as separate entities. Were you becoming insane too?  
  
Truthfully speaking, you did wish for him to be happy. Particularly, not through your pain, but through guidance and finding completeness within himself. You didn't think he didn't needed anyone to make him whole. But he believed he did. A philosophy of his maybe, or a proverb recited to him by his mother, as he kept repeating upon his first attempts to make you his. His lips spoke nothing but contradictions and his actions followed through with plenty of conflicting sensations. A gentle nudge followed by the sound of breaking bones. A whisper and a promise before another insult. You were his beloved and then all of a sudden you were another whore who betrayed him like everyone else did. Sometimes his attitude was changed based on a whim or how annoying his imaginary boss was or even on how sexy he liked you deem you some nights. There was a routine and yet no routine at all. Most nights you barely enjoyed for yourself. They were mostly spent entertaining him and pleasing him and trying to find the right buttons to push. Fucked up and nearly entirely hollow. You were scared that if you figured out how to say and do the right things all the time, you might enjoy it too.  
  
Sanity was one of the only things you had left. Dignity and shame were thrown to the wind, innocence and curiosity down the drain; you needed to keep the thing that made you human. But if Eddie had none of these things, was he then not human? There were things he did that were similar to that of a human. You couldn't say he was lifeless. Although the bodies that hung from the ceiling in his private storage locked away certainly were.  
  
You slipped into the embrace of slumber for what felt like a moment before a rattling of the door echoed throughout the room. Was he back already? The handle kept jiggling before eventually dissipating entirely. Did he forget the key or something? But he usually kept a spare. He told you he was always prepared for any unexpected events. And if he truly had nothing to enter the room with, he would either call to you or break down the door insisting that you purposefully didn’t want to let him in. Everything depended on his mood. Still, the fact that there was someone lurking around that wasn’t Eddie had frightened you. You were so accustomed to him being the one you waited for that you had no idea how to react if it were someone else. You wished to hide but that day he was feeling especially frisky. He kept you restrained.  
  
The sound of muffled footsteps began getting closer and more audible each time. Your heart was racing. You made a futile effort to try and escape but your energy was nearly always drained. Your husband made sure you barely had enough power to stay awake for him if needed. The entire world around you was as if it were moving in slow motion, and your sluggish movements were only making it worse. You were fucked, the entire situation was fucked, whoever was approaching you was fucked. The light gleaming on his distorted face evoked a terrified scream. You were thankful that you could dedicate your energy towards _something_ useful. Hopefully your bastard husband would hear you this time.  
  
The cold touch of his fingertips brushed against your skin. He was naked, like you had been many times before, but only under Eddie’s eyes. Although you were clothed with a couple layers of fabric that he crafted specifically for your body, you still felt horribly exposed. If you were shaking, you couldn’t tell. Your body was aching with pain but numb with fear. Who the fuck was he? Where did he come from? Why did he wander so far from his region of the facility? What was he going to do to you? Where the fuck was your husband?  
  
“You’re rattling...like - like a s-s-snake…” His neck twitched. “But daddy said I...I could get a puppy. Daddy said I could get a fucking puppy!” His fist came up to grip your outfit by the hem of your sleeve. He used another hand to grip your throat. “Are you a puppy? No...no! You fucking said it wasn’t a puppy. But I - _I_ said I wanted a puppy!” Under any other circumstance, you would have wondered who the fuck he was talking to, but under this one, you just wanted him to stop fucking choking you. Where the hell was Eddie? “Daddy never gets us what we want. Yes, never…” The outfit started tearing at the seams. You tried your best to struggle, especially against the hands of your new torturer and the metals of your restraints. “But you’ll do...I’ll make you into my new pet. Daddy can’t tell us what the fuck to do.” He pressed his thumb hard against your airway. “I’ll walk you and feed you like an owner would. Yes, you’ll do just - just - just fine.”  
  
A few tears leaked from your face. Was this the end for you? Would you spend your last moments at the mercy of some stranger? Your chest throbbed. Could you, at the very least, see your sadist of a husband one last time? The one who groomed and kept you and told you he would always be there for you? The one who drove blades into your body while telling you everything was okay? The one you witnessed go through a flurry of emotions while having a breakdown in front of you, stabbing a dead body multiple times? You really were fucked every which way, but you didn’t want to die. Not with this asshole’s hands wrapped around your neck.  
  
“Darling, I think you should look away.” A few drops of arterial blood splattered your face. Never in your life had you been more happy to hear his voice. You stared up at him wide eyed. The grin of your temporary captor had surrendered to a new form of surprise, regret, and terror. All at once. “You should know the punishment for laying a hand on my beloved.” Your eyes finally focused and the sight of a blade driven into the neck of “daddy’s little man” had came into view. “I get rather...aggressive sometimes. You understand right?” After taking the blade out, he drove it in again. The man fell to his knees, simultaneously trying to crawl away, but once in Eddie’s hands, no one could escape. Several sounds of stabbing filled the air. He screamed, but after the 9th or 10th stab, his vocal cords were likely deteriorated into nothing but blood. But his malicious nature didn’t stop after 20 stabs or 30. Eddie was uncharacteristically quiet, especially for the ten minutes he had been giving his punishment.  
  
“I’ll hang him up for you as a decoration.” This time his voice startled you. You hadn’t expected him to even say anything at all. When he stood, his hands were reeking of fresh blood and his face was smeared with a combination of dried up blood and some droplets ran down his face. You thanked every higher entity that it wasn’t your own this time. He unlocked the cuffs attached to the table and examined your neck. “His impurities will be erased from you soon dear.” Your heart started thumping again at the thought of him ripping open your throat for the sake of ridding you of all vulgarities and dirtiness. He took a knife and made a deep incision in the palm of his hand. He rubbed the open wound on your throat and exposed skin on your arm. “Did you miss me, my love?” The same hand came up, and he stroked your cheek with his thumb.  
  
You nodded slowly. “I was scared because you weren’t here.” Your voice was so quiet in your throat that even he had to strain to hear it.  
  
The crease in his brow had softened after hearing this from you. “I’ll never leave you alone again. That filthy, filthy fucking scum came in here...and _tarnished_ my wife. I won’t let it happen again.” Though his words were divided by his rather bipolar nature, it was a promise you were happy to hear. “I’ll quit my job. He’ll understand.” ‘He’ referring to his boss, of course, you reasoned. “He has to understand. I must protect you at all times.” His arms came under your body, and he carried you to the bed you shared with him. Eddie set you down with the same softness and tenderness you remembered he gave you when he took the veil off your face for the first time and told you that nothing could compare to your beauty. He made sure your body faced him.  
  
“There, there…” he cooed, patting down a few strands of hair down on your head. Though his clothes were riddled with that rancid smell of blood and rust, you buried your face in his chest and found a fucked up sense of comfort in it. “Speak for me more often, darling.”  
  
“Of course,” you murmured, “....my love.”  



End file.
